Happy Easter Eve!
We had been in the same spot at Isla San Benedicto for 10 days and wanted to get one more dive in before moving south to Isla Socorro. I am so glad we did as we experienced a first for us underwater. While we have had pretty close encounters with hammerhead sharks on this trip, it is normally one or two swimming around minding their own business. That’s good as we don’t want too close of an encounter, but it is nice to see these magnificent animals clearly.
Before we get into our sightings and pictures, I’ll talk a little about sharks here. If you are not aware, there are three variants of hammerhead sharks: The bonnethead, scalloped hammerhead and the great hammerhead. The bonnetheads are largely harmless, the scalloped not dangerous unless feeding or spearfishing, and the great hammerheads should be monitored as they *can* but rarely do get aggressive. We pretty much exclusively have the scalloped hammerheads here in the Revillagigedo islands and therefore are alert but not worried. Other sharks we see regularly are silkies, duskies, white-tipped reef sharks and silvertip sharks. The white-tipped reef shark isn’t considered dangerous and the rest are if there is spearfishing or feeding activities or a diver is trying to molest one (petting, riding, grabbing the fin/tail and other stupid activities). Again, we are alert but not concerned. The one shark we keep an close eye out for is tiger sharks. We have not seen any, but they are in the area and can be aggressive. Universally we are excited to see these magnificent creatures and surprisingly have never felt fear. I expect that’s largely because they show so little interest in us and just go about their sharky business.
Back to the dive, we had a great dive for April fool’s on what is known as the canyon. There is a fish/shark cleaning station where everyone congregates and gets ‘cleaned’ by the little fish, who then pick the parasites off the big fish. Amazingly, no one gets eaten… It’s an example of predator/prey cooperation in the wild and is fascinating to watch. While hanging out here, we saw our first school of hammerheads in the distance and it was beautiful!! A first for us and hopefully to be repeated.
Sorry for the clarity as they were right at the edge of our vision. This one is a bit better looking up from about 70 feet.
Happy April Fool’s day from Bruce!
Shifting gears, the wind was forecast to pick up, so we departed San Benedicto on April 2nd and sailed south 36nm to Isla Socorro and anchored at Punta Tosca( 18 46.894N, 111 02.722W). More about that in our next message.